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General Season 2024 summary and thoughts

regenerated borg

Thought I'd start a thread on the 2024 season summary. Where fellow members can offer their opinions on the teams overall seasons performance.

To me, got away with murder in 2023. This year every team took notice and gave it to us fom round 1.
Honesty just couldn't handle the added pressure and got cruelly exposed in what baggage we got away with but didn't this time around..

Be interesting to see what everyone's views are..
 
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After the great highs of 2023 with a squad that believed and bought into AW's game plan, this season was supposed to build on those results, however, no longer flying under the radar and a considerably heavy injury toll impeded growth and progress, leading to a lack of results.
Lots of lessons for AW to take away and digest, my opinion is he now needs to be more ruthless in player selection with the view of rejuvenating the top side with the more than capable and talented young forwards we have seen bits and pieces of.
If we are to be serious challengers over the next 5 year spell, then these players will be at the heart of it.
Of course we have seen what the lack of consistent halves selection offers, so that is another lesson to be learnt. Fortunately we have some depth of reasonable players to select from but, to be a force they will need to lift a few levels of performance or else recruitment will need to be strongly considered.

Overall, although not happy with results i'm also not that disappointed. AW showed us in his first year what we are capable of, it's been a cruel second season but I believe the future is bright.. man!
;)
 
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Small story. I got given tickets to every home game last year and was watching one where Barnett was returning from being out for a while with injury. The whole team was moving up and back as a line, defence was totally connected except for Mitch who was a metre behind the rest of the team which is why I noticed the rest of the teams cohesion.

Our horrific injury toll, SJs decline and AFBs disgruntled nature could be offered up as reasons to why the team struggled but to me, the lack of cohesion in the defensive line was the biggest difference from last year. I'm sure the boys were making the same amount of mistakes and the halves playmaking and kicking was roughly the same but the extra defence meant that they couldn't attack with the same energy.

Fix the defence first.
 
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This season was more needed then last season. Got to actually see the weakness and areas of improvement.

I think the hope from here is that this season is hangover from an over performance last year, the emotion of returning home and probably for the first time preforming consistently.

The season might be remembered for the blowout loses but the story should more be the 7 or so close games we lost and the injury list. I could be wrong but it feels like we had the most lost time by injuries, we definitely did half way through the season by a wide margin.

Refocus on the defence, hopefully JFH sets that standard, nail our half combo and the future looks good

In terms of on field i think it was a tight season this year so maybe a slightly below par run got us really close to the bottom when this may have been a building season for the next 5 years.

Off the field if the club keeps the momentum with the social media hype and fan participation going we can start to cement our juniors and hopefully make them want to stay in the warriors for the long term
 
Viking said:
Small story. I got given tickets to every home game last year and was watching one where Barnett was returning from being out for a while with injury. The whole team was moving up and back as a line, defence was totally connected except for Mitch who was a metre behind the rest of the team which is why I noticed the rest of the teams cohesion.

Our horrific injury toll, SJs decline and AFBs disgruntled nature is why the team struggled but to me, the lack of cohesion in the defensive line was the biggest difference from last year. I'm sure the boys were making the same amount of mistakes and the halves playmaking and kicking was roughly the same but the extra defence meant that they couldn't attack with the same energy.

Fix the defence first.
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Thank you to Sam Hewat from SENZ if you are here, but found this interesting and a big factor in our lack of cohesion not only defensively but on attack. SJ not training with the team early doors would be a major factor also and in hindsight, should probably have been rested to heal up that injury.

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Damo said:
Thank you to Sam Hewat from SENZ if you are here, but found this interesting and a big factor in our lack of cohesion not only defensively but on attack. SJ not training with the team early doors would be a major factor also and in hindsight, should probably have been rested to heal up that injury.

View attachment 8643
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Don't forget the forwards. Our back row has been chopped and changed a number of times as well.

The disappointing part is when we did manage to get things working we changed them. In the face of numerous changes we changed some more.
 
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This season reminds me of 2004 and 2019.

2004 we made the preliminary final the year prior and made a few recruits. This years were more high profile where 2004 they were more based on potential. They pretty much all failed. 2004 was a big come down like 2024.

2019 we made the finals for the first time in a while. A lot of the turn around in 2018 would have been the big recruitment drive, similar to 2023. Both 2019 and 2024 we should have been building on the year prior but failed to do so.

Every year there are teams that have a new coach or recruits or made plans to turn things around. Last year our plans worked. The next challenge was to maintain that. Now we are in a similar position to last year needing to turn things around. We don't have the benefit of a new coach, so maybe we need to recruit a new assistant. Recruitment will be tough as there are a lot of clubs with money available and moving on dead wood.
 
Injuries haven't helped. They may have been more disruptive than previous years. But it has seemed like the last few years we have ben wanting to get our top side or combinations or someone will be out.

We started the year with a lot of confidence. After last year that is understandable. The question would be did they do similar work last off season as leading into 2023? We got a lot of hype in the early rounds about our style of play even though we weren't seeing results. The talk around us soon stopped.

It has been amazing how far things have fallen.

Last year we looked to be all in sync with people knowing where to run. This year the ball playing seems to be too far from the line and the runners haven't been in the right place.

Defence last year would hold out multiple sets. This year we can let sides in as soon as they get to our 20.
 
To me the whole season is summarised as:

1 - extreme injuries and lack of combinations/ cohesion
2 - SJ’s injuries in the key position which have made him look old fast. This killed our attack potential off the back of dominant forwards.

Our ladder position pretty much reflect those two factors.

On a positive note, we will look back as a year a lot of juniors got first grade experience and debuts (even if fans want more) setting us up for the future.
 
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wizard of Tauranga said:
What was 2005 and 2020 like, to give some insight into next year?
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Shit. Both of those periods ended up with pretty poor years where we needed to rebuild.

I am hoping in 2025, 2026 we don't talk of 2023 like we did the years after 2011 where there was some hope we can turn things around as we have the players that grand finals in all 3 grades.

Professional sport moves quickly. The other clubs are also looking to improve.
 
wizard of Tauranga said:
2005 and 2020 we had the coaching legends Tony Kemp and Kearney.

Will Webster rise above them?

2020 we also had covid - hopefully not a repeat of that 🤣
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Have you seen the reports on M-Pox? :LOL: Hopefully it is just the WHO being cautious after dropping the ball early on with covid.

If a coach has shown something (positive) with a side. I've always been in favour of seeing a coach work through issues. We have tended to sack coaches quickly. Yes a lot probably have been justified but it does mean when we are looking for a coach the attention turns to how hard a job it is.

Next year I am looking to see how Webster responds. I'd rather have stability than another new era starting again.
 
What's so confusing this season is that we're so close yet so far. Couldn't string 80mins of what we're capable off. We win those games against the bulldogs, raiders and dolphins we're sitting 8th with a bye to come. Yet at times looked absolutely hopeless. Huge off-season for Webster to fix some glaring holes.
 
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Wellington Warrior said:
2025 improvements…. We need to revert back to white shorts for the home kit. Get rid of the loser Auckland NPC style away kit.

Fix that then sort out the defence
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From my perspective we are playing a very simple game.
Tackle, run hard,kick well, show some speed and work hard for you and your teammates.
Soo many excuses and theories making a simple game complicated 🙃
 
Still maintain there was a fair lack of professionalism in our opposition teams at least for the first half of last year.
Nobody will admit to it in public, will claim the exact opposite in fact, but the Warriors were not taken seriously enough last year. Given the team's history, who can blame our oppoents, really?
When we were taken seriously, we got pretty well done (Broncos game, Souths game type results)
The problem is that too many players - and maybe the coaching staff - told themselves that when they won, they'd clicked and that The Rise Of The Warriors had begun and was only going to get better because The Rise was inexeroable, unbeatable and every year going forward was a case of being able - as Conan said: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women".
Nope. Double Nope. We became a target because of 2023 and teams have aimed up against us. As happens with every Top 8/Top 4. The lower clubs want to take them down a peg.
Injuries haven't helped, certainly and things like The AFB Situation haven't exactly helped player/club harmony, either. Both of those pretty much outside the coaching staff's control so that's not on them (unless the injuries and poor training methods/etc can be linked).
I'd give AW his 2025 as promised in his contract but would be asking him how he's going to make 2024 a negative outlier in his coaching career rather than an expected yearly result in his coaching career before I signed off in giving him the 2026 which he's contracted to.
 
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